Attention Span 2009 – Don Share

A conflict-of-interest choice, as I had a hand, or at least a few fingers, in it. But you get Bunting’s great poem, a trove of info about him including pictures, a DVD and an audio CD. No excuse for not owning this.

Janet Frame | Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems | Bloodaxe | 2008

She stored the drafts of her poems in a disused goose bath rather than become a famous poet on a list like this one.

Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey Robinson, eds. | Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic & Postromantic Poetry | University of California Press | 2009

We always knew that the roots of postmodernism reached way down to the Romantic; here’s ample and amplifying proof. Beyond that, there are astonishing things here you won’t find anywhere else, juxtaposed with work you thought you knew.

Back when poetry feuds meant something, Quevedo and Gongora were in something of a death match; now they’re both immortal, and with the publication of this book we’re lucky to have easily available translations of each.